Discussion
Some advice please. I parked in a local farm foods store where parking is free for 60mins. I overshot that by 10 mins. My fault.
First reaction is, on receipt of the official looking letter, to pay. However,I seem to recall parking fines of this nature are actually non enforceable in law.
Is this the case? Do I hold my water and blank it or would I eventually get bailiffs round?
Can anyone give a definitive answer rather than speculation?
First reaction is, on receipt of the official looking letter, to pay. However,I seem to recall parking fines of this nature are actually non enforceable in law.
Is this the case? Do I hold my water and blank it or would I eventually get bailiffs round?
Can anyone give a definitive answer rather than speculation?
They may have a picture of YOU driving as you entered and/or exited the car park.
You can ignore everything you receive and they may go away. They can only act against the driver who entered the contract with them by entering the car park, viewing the conditions and agreeing to them. They have no automatic right to pursue the Registered Keeper.
If it did go to County Court, bear in mind they may have photographs showing you entering the car park and being more likely than not the person who entered the contract.
From there you could of course have the penalty vs loss argument, but that's a fight for another day...
From my point of view, if they are likely to have CCTV specifically of me driving the car, I'd be inclined to pay it, as if they took it to the nth degree, they'd have a strong chance of nailing you. If it's just a pay and display controlled privately, I'd ignore as the chances of the them having ANPR or CCTV footage of the area more than a month after the event are less likely.
You can ignore everything you receive and they may go away. They can only act against the driver who entered the contract with them by entering the car park, viewing the conditions and agreeing to them. They have no automatic right to pursue the Registered Keeper.
If it did go to County Court, bear in mind they may have photographs showing you entering the car park and being more likely than not the person who entered the contract.
From there you could of course have the penalty vs loss argument, but that's a fight for another day...
From my point of view, if they are likely to have CCTV specifically of me driving the car, I'd be inclined to pay it, as if they took it to the nth degree, they'd have a strong chance of nailing you. If it's just a pay and display controlled privately, I'd ignore as the chances of the them having ANPR or CCTV footage of the area more than a month after the event are less likely.
cptsideways said:
Take whatever you bought from the shop back for a refund & politely tell them to stick their business & that letter up their ass.
You are assuming the OP bought something in the shop, and didn't just use it as a bit of cheeky free parking while he went to buy drugs, visit a hooker or do some fine charity work. 
As far as I know they are unenforceable.
Just ignore it.
A shop where I used to work many years ago never bothered with fines.
We just put some nice A4 notes on the car asking them not to park there.
But we attached them to the windscreen with lots and lots of glue.
I always enjoyed chatting to the angry not-customers who came in to complain.
Especially as the chap who had put the notice on the car had left for the day.
Love this!Ignore it.
Had the same, from the same company
Letter 1: £90 fine, £60 if you pay now
Letter 2: £120 fine, £90 if you pay now, photo of your vehicle
Letter 3: Some debt collection company saying you haven't paid - Company registered under the same as Parking Eye
Letter 4: Threat from Parking Eye again saying they will go through the "correct channels"
That was March, all went in the bin, assholes.
Ignore them, do not respond, under any circumstances.
Had the same, from the same company
Letter 1: £90 fine, £60 if you pay now
Letter 2: £120 fine, £90 if you pay now, photo of your vehicle
Letter 3: Some debt collection company saying you haven't paid - Company registered under the same as Parking Eye
Letter 4: Threat from Parking Eye again saying they will go through the "correct channels"
That was March, all went in the bin, assholes.
Ignore them, do not respond, under any circumstances.
carreauchompeur said:
10 Pence Short said:
How so?
Define the "loss". How has it cost them £60 if you overstayed in a free car park.
Civil law does not recognise the concept of a "penalty".
This is a penalty.
This is all assuming they can identify the driver, not the RK.
It may be that one court may interpret the law in a different way to another, but it would be a brave person to advise someone to ignore and that there would be no chance of come back.
Yes, it's unlikely a person will be pursued all the way to Court, but they will get a repetition of increasingly threatening letters, first from the parking company, then probably from people purporting to be Solicitors, then on to debt collectors. None will be nice and some people would prefer to stump up to £50 than have sleepless nights over it.
If it ever did go to court, the defendant would not look great in terms of costs if they'd totally ignored the situation throughout, either.
All of this notwithstanding that the Government are likely to change the law in the near future that will make the Registered Keeper responsible for parking fines from both Local Authority and Private parking enforcement.
The more the 'no comeback' mantra is peddled out, the more likely people will get caught out come changeover time.
Not to mention.
An hours free parking is quite reasonable and kind of the shop.
To the OP.
Where you shopping in FarmFoods?
Could you just give them a call and say that you were in the shop for longer than you expected – if so I expect they will waive the charge.
Or were you in fact abusing their free parking, and being a bit cheeky?
An hours free parking is quite reasonable and kind of the shop.
To the OP.
Where you shopping in FarmFoods?
Could you just give them a call and say that you were in the shop for longer than you expected – if so I expect they will waive the charge.
Or were you in fact abusing their free parking, and being a bit cheeky?
carreauchompeur said:
Farmfoods? Excuse me? You do realise this is Pistonheads, don't you?
I'm going to get my butler's company director to throw a can of Red Bull at you!
Anyway- Back on topic. Completely unenforceable. Bin!
I'm going to get my butler's company director to throw a can of Red Bull at you!
Anyway- Back on topic. Completely unenforceable. Bin!
it's Red Rooster at Farmfoods actually, 30p a can last time I checked.Er, not that I went into farmfoods, being a PHer.
No, not ever.
Oh balls.
10 Pence Short said:
I would be wary of handing out a blanket 'no worries' piece of advice, on the basis that a PPC armed with all the evidence can and has won in Court on these kind of tickets.
Do you have any links to such cases? I'd be interested to see.Without knowing the ins and outs of those cases, my advice would still be ignore it completely. Whatever you do, do not engage in correspondence with the company concerned or any debt collection firm which contacts you subsequently.
To be fair I was being somewhat cheeky. I never set foot in their store, just intended to make use of the 60mins free parking. They have sent two pics of the car on the letter, not a pic of me.
TBH if the fine was £10 or so I'd pay it, my fault. The fine is excessive though.
Some civil debt is clearly enforceable as local authorities can get bailiffs onto people for non payment of parking fines. Id heard that fines issued by this company were nonsense and not legally enforceable but, aside from the responses above, I wondered if anyone knew, categorically and definitively if this was the case.
TBH if the fine was £10 or so I'd pay it, my fault. The fine is excessive though.
Some civil debt is clearly enforceable as local authorities can get bailiffs onto people for non payment of parking fines. Id heard that fines issued by this company were nonsense and not legally enforceable but, aside from the responses above, I wondered if anyone knew, categorically and definitively if this was the case.
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